Traditional Method Dry Cider
$18 | 750 ml

The Story of Northern Spy 2019

The first Northern Spy I ever tasted as a child was from an ancient, abandoned orchard on Albee Hill where pink striped, pale green apples hung from a tree that was probably 100 years old, hollow and covered in multiflora rose. That early influence came to define my taste in apples: ­­­tart, dense, deep with flavor. As a young adult, I was reintroduced to the variety by James Cummins, who in the early 1980’s had planted Northern Spies alongside more “modern” varieties on dwarfing rootstocks at his U-Pick orchard. This was an unusual move…in those days everyone wanted something new and ‘heirloom varieties’ had not yet come back into fashion. But Northern Spy was James’s favorite apple, and when coming from a 6^th generation orchardist who grew over 30 varieties, this seemed liked a pretty good endorsement. James made it clear to me: his Spies were the original strain, not one of the many red colored clones, which had been selected over the years for cosmetics and which lacked in intensity of flavor.

So when we began grafting trees to plant in our new Albee Hill orchard, we selected scion wood from both James’s Spies and the ancient ones on Albee Hill; our own little selection massale. Now in its 12^th year, this orchard is beginning to bear very interesting fruit. This 2019 Northern Spy cider is made entirely from apples grown in our Albee Hill orchard and shows minerally depth and lip smacking acidity along side concentrated fruit and serious density (despite its low alcohol) making it another endorsement of this old New York apple variety.

-Autumn Stoscheck, cidermaker